Alex J. Campbell Jr.’s homebred Karlovy Vary was doing well on
Sunday, the day after she scored a front-running win in the 75th running
of the $500,000 Central Bank Ashland (G1) at odds of 15-1. Her next
target is the Kentucky Oaks (G1) on May 4 at Churchill Downs.

“That’s where she’ll go as long as everything is good,” trainer Rusty Arnold said.

The Central Bank Ashland marked the first stakes win for Karlovy
Vary, a daughter of Dynaformer who broke her maiden at Keeneland last
October in the second start of her career. Campbell also raced the
filly’s dam, The Right Pew, a daughter of Pulpit, whose offspring can be
a bit temperamental.

“She has her moments,” Arnold said about Karlovy Vary. “She’s got a
little Pulpit in her, which is kind of a twofold situation. The Pulpits
are great because they can run, but they can get a little wound up. She
has those moments. Yesterday, she was very well behaved. I think that’s
what caused some of her problems at the end of her 2-year-old year. She
had not mentally grown up.”

Not long after Karlovy Vary won an allowance race on the turf at
Gulfstream Park on February 26 in her 3-year-old debut, Arnold shipped
her to Keeneland to give her plenty of time to settle in and train for
the Central Bank Ashland. Now the filly will remain at Keeneland for
about another two weeks before shipping to Churchill, where she will
have about two weeks before the Kentucky Oaks.

“Her last two works will be at Churchill,” Arnold said.

With the Central Bank Ashland victory, Arnold scored his 239th
career win at Keeneland. He is third behind D. Wayne Lukas (277 wins)
and Bill Mott (245 wins) on the list of the track’s all-time winningest
trainers. He also added to his unique record at Keeneland, where he has
saddled at least one winner at every meeting here since the spring of
1986, except for one season in the late 1980s when he did not saddle a
starter.

Hillsbrook Farms’ Central Bank Ashland runner-up, Hard Not to Like,
is scheduled to leave Keeneland on Monday morning for Woodbine, where
trainer Gail Cox has a string of 24 horses.

“She ran really well,” Cox said of Hard Not to Like’s 2012 debut.
“There is a chance she could come back for the (Kentucky) Oaks. We will
go home and talk about it.”

Hard Not to Like made her main track debut in the Central Bank Ashland following five starts last year as 2-year-old on grass.

“I thought she handled the Polytrack well,” said Cox, whose filly
wintered at Payson Park over the winter and trained on a dirt surface
that she would encounter should she return for the Kentucky Oaks.